I live in DC’s third ward with my family. Josh makes some fair points. A big issue he overlooks is the ridiculous council members we elect. Trayon White was expelled by the council for taking a bribe, which was caught on camera. He was reelected to the council by his ward’s voters.
We exist in a middle ground where we have home rule but can have the feds over rule us when we get too wild. This also happened in the Biden administration with a bill about reforming the penalties for crimes. It reminds me of student council elections where they promise to serve pizza every day or something.
I wish we had self government like the rest of the country, but I’m sometimes relieved we don’t.
Urban liberals (of which I am one) do have a longstanding tendency to pooh-pooh legitimate concerns about crime and disorder in cities. I’m not sure what it is. Part of it is probably that young white liberals who move to big cities view themselves as edgy/cool for being able to “handle” the grittiness of urban life unlike their conservative counterparts from their hometown. Part of it is that right-wing complaints about urban crime are evergreen and will occur regardless of the year or actual level of crime in the city or neighborhood in question, which probably makes liberals discount their concerns— for instance I was told by relatives in 2015 that they were too scared to visit crime-ridden manhattan, which at the time was experiencing some of the lowest levels of violent crime in decades. Part of it is also probably that conservative complaints about crime are often tinged with coded racism or prejudice about poor people. But whatever it is, it does result in a lot of city residents tolerating levels of disorder and lack of safety that, objectively, should not be acceptable.
It really depends on which liberals you're talking about. There are liberals/progressives heavily invested in neighborhoods and policies, and liberals who aren't. Some are effective at things like crime reduction, some aren't. What may seem to you like an unacceptable level of toleration may be "hey, it's way better than it used to be and I'm proud of the progress we've made" to someone else, though maybe not in DC based on what Josh and others are saying. It really does seem like DC has been left behind.
Also, keep in mind that rural areas can be absurdly violent, and we should all probably be a little less tolerant of letting commentators elide that fact when trashing godless liberals in general.
Maybe, but there's also just the fact that some level of crime will always exist plus there's a cost/benefit equation associated with efforts to reduce crime below whatever level it currently sits at. Crime by any statistical objective is pretty low in most places. That's just a fact. How people feel about the crime level is a different issue. It can always be lower but then the question about whether the deploy resources towards that goal or towards other goals becomes germane. It just staggers me that, of all problems we face, crime tops the lost for so many people given the stats
The truth is (and progressives don't like to mention this fact) is that we have as much crime as we'll tolerate. We know that imprisoning people convicted of committing crimes on multiple occasions reduces crime, but we choose to fool ourselves into believing that most of them can be rehabilitated, which is false. Most crime is committed by a hardcore small minority and we could reduce it substantially by imprisoning those people for life. It's our choice as a society not to do this, so we have essentially decided we're OK with allowing Americans to be victimized by criminals at a certain level.
Anecdotally, DC is the only city where I have gotten mugged. That was my first visit to the US and I wasn't yet familiar with the concept of good vs bad neighborhoods in a first world country. I was very scared and shaken up and even told a cop about it because I was afraid that if I get accosted by another set of muggers before I reach the metro station, I didn't have any cash to avoid a beating. The cop looked at me like I was wasting his time. Fortunately, nothing else happened and my friend had enough change for us to buy tickets back to the MD suburb where we were staying.
People usually cite homicide stats for political arguments but many crimes like mugging and property crimes go unreported and add to the feeling of a lack of safety. So, I totally agree with Josh that Democrats should take the issue of crime seriously, even if the incarceration rate goes up. They run most of the cities, not Republican mayors.
When I lived on the border between Adams Morgan and Mt Pleasant in the late 80's, there were about 450 murders a year in DC. For fun I looked up the rate in my first year in NYC (1991) - 2,571. So I suspect many of your readers are scratching their heads because for a lot of us, crime was an issue 3 decades ago that, statistically, has been reduced so substantially as to barely matter. So when the President goes on about crime it's almost 100% fear-mongering.
There seems to be some kind of Fox News Fallacy going on, and Trump is an expert at exploiting it. Find something obvious and true [1] and watch the Democrats refuse to admit it.
This article is a perfect example of why I’m a paying subscriber to Josh’s work. He is not a part of a liberal echo chamber, but instead is an independent, practical, and thoughtful voice. Thanks for your work; it makes me feel more well-rounded as a consumer of political news and opinion.
Well done, Josh. I grew up in suburban Maryland, moved to Virginia after getting my undergraduate degree. Final Virginia home spot was in Alexandria where I lived for about 16 years, then moved north to get outside the DC Beltway culture.
Starting in 2007, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty did an excellent job of redeveloping the Southwest/Southeast portion of the city north of the Anacostia River. Included demolishing DC's version of Cabrini-Green high rise public housing, and installing a baseball park for the Washington Nationals (the Washington Senators had left in the 1970s). Restaurants, hotels, housing followed. It helped that the Navy finally realized its leased space in Arlington wasn't secure, and moved to the Navy Yard, near the Nationals stadium. DoD contractors followed, and office buildings were built. Result: Fenty served one term as mayor (2007-2011) but was voted out, when he lost the D primary. Previously he served 2 terms on the DC city council from Ward 4. [Now Fenty is doing VC work with Marc Andressen.]
FYI: Eleanor Holmes Norton was first elected as DC's delegate to Congress in 1990. She is still on the job at 88 years old.
Another scion of the Democrats' Congressional gerontocracy.
About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine who worked at the National Archives was retiring and was kind enough to give a behind the scenes guided tour for my daughter, niece (both early teens) and I before he left the job. The visit was fantastic but on the Metro ride back, a disheveled man who was either high or on some kind of mental health episode got into our car & was aggressively screaming at and confronting riders. He then stopped right next to where we were sitting and dropped his pants. Between his junk literally dangling next to their faces and the stench of his fecal stained pants, it was a traumatic experience for the girls. We got off at the next station and took the next train home. No this was not an assault or violent felony but it shouldn’t be accepted either. My point is that when elected Dems wave around the charts showing “declines” in recorded crimes, it only infuriates people who have lived through the constant anxiety induced by unchecked disorder in public spaces.
Is Trump’s possibly unlawful use of the military to patrol the streets of DC going to fix any of this? Absolutely not, but can you really blame some people for being so angry and Dems’ dismissal of their legitimate public safety concerns that they shrug off Trump’s authoritarian actions?
I think the big issue here is distinguishing between levels and rates. I grew up in the DC area (80s/90s) and lived in the district for 15 years (‘07-‘22). There’s simply no question the district became safer over that period. Areas of the city that now feature $1M+ homes were just not safe places to go in the 80s/90s/early 2000s. A large geographic part of the city became much safer over that period. I remember being a kid and going to concerts in the late 90s at the then-new location of the 9:30 club near Howard and the Capitol Ballroom near what is now Nats Park and being scared—about my car, about the walk to the metro. Safety in those areas has improved dramatically.
At the same time, “safer” is not the same thing as “safe.” I now live in Denver and spend approximately zero mental energy worrying about safety. In DC, I’d worry about package theft all the time and would often take taxis (then Ubers) short distances because I was worried about walking late at night (I was mugged once, in ‘08, by three dudes who couldn’t have been older than 14). That kind of stuff just never enters my mind in Denver.
There’s a lot of crime in DC. It’s better than it was but it can improve still. The local politicians mostly suck ass, so there’s a clear role for the feds. The problem, of course, is that *these* feds suck even more ass.
Thirty some years ago I lived at 19th and Kalorama. Loved the neighborhood but never knew where I might find my car. No kids yet so it didn't bother me as much as it would today (in crime free downtown Boston). My question is why the Biden Administration did nothing in 2022-2023 and left this low hanging fruit.
As someone who has appreciated a lot of your work and regularly enjoyed your podcast for quite a while, I'm genuinely surprised that I'm apparently the only one thoroughly disgusted by this piece. It is absolute hot garbage.
It is completely unreasonable to legitimize the claims of a crisis based on your anecdotal information, skepticism of recent data, and the comparatively high rates of crime over the long term. No rational person could look at the troves of readily accessible data going back to the 60s and determine that that is a rational take on the situation. This is obviously about normalizing the process of federalizing police to terrorize, intimidate and punish blue cities for political ends. This is intended to be made permanent. This is intended to be repeated elsewhere. They are very transparent about these goals. You're suggesting we should assume Trump is acting in good faith and engage in some productive bipartisan policy discussions. Seriously?
You're very upset about Hakeem Jeffries' statement and its potential impact on voters. No similar concerns that Trump has announced that he hates over half the country and is actively moving to occupy and punish them. Mind numbing.
Your take on crime is ridiculously unnuanced. I get that you're an anti-woke Democrat. You support more cops, more prosecutors, more judges, more aggressive tactics from all, more prison cells filled and longer sentences. Common sense so clean and unassailable that it's incredibly frustrating that someone would argue otherwise, right? Well, that's bullshit. If you looked into it with an open mind, you'd know it's much more complicated than that. It makes for terrible, destructive policy, but it's always good politics. You bemoan the difficulties in recertifying a crime lab that is needed to gain more convictions, but conveniently ignore that it lost certification because it was a corrupt outfit railroading innocent people. Or maybe that's how you'd prefer they operate.
You identify with the young professionals fearing violent crime, but are incapable of empathizing with or even humanizing those who are intended to be the targets of intimidation, with national guardsmen apparently liberated to do "whatever the hell they want". You've shown the same dehumanizing attitude in some of your other pieces towards asylum seekers. You're a talented writer. Extremely sharp and perceptive, and sometimes hilarious. But you're also an elitist in the absolute worst sense of the term.
If not declaring emergencies everywhere and sending in troops, then what? Hm, good point. It is after all such a reasonable option with so many upsides. Definitely well within the normal ebb and flow of policy decisions in a pluralistic democracy.
Even framing the question as blue city problem is capitulating to the concept of Republican superiority on crime that Democrats must mimic if they want to win. It's a poisonous idea. I've lived in San Diego for 21 years, 14 with a Republican mayor and 7 with a Democrat. I can't tell you a single thing I can point to that was different while living in a red city versus a blue city. You can never win on improving crime, because people still don't feel safe. Most of us have lived through a remarkable period of dropping crime and yet the overwhelming majority were convinced crime was rising through the whole time. It's the mindset that allows Trump to win in 2016 on a platform of chaos in the cities and an invasion at the southern border despite multi decade lows in crime and in illegal border crossings.
The crime delusion, based in feelings not facts, is impossible to address with logic. Feeling unsafe is, of course, amplified by our media landscape at every turn, where local TV news emphasizes crimes, social media sensationalizes violent acts all of which are captured by ubiquitous cameras, and what were once stories one might have read in a single local newspaper all become national stories daily that everyone sees in their doomscrolls
"Well, that's bullshit. If you looked into it with an open mind, you'd know it's much more complicated than that."
No, actually, it's not. It's not at all complicated. We have as much crime as we will tolerate as a society. Imprisoning more people reduces crimes. We just feel guilty about doing that on the scale necessary to reduce criminal behavior. It's not any more complex than that.
I don't claim to be an expert, but over time I have made a genuine effort with an agnostic attitude to understand the body of knowledge related to the effectiveness of criminal justice policies. If you do a little googling of 'efficacy of tough on crime policies' or 'societal impacts of tough on crime policies', then filter through the quality of what you find to try to eliminate clearly partisan works trying to justify their preferred policies, a picture may start to emerge. For me, that picture was not that the evidence is clear. To me, a rational person could not go through that process and end up where you are.
I’m not sure that good governance and good politics necessarily align here. I don’t have any reason to doubt you that DC is less safe than NYC. But as someone who lives thousands of miles away, and a non-city dweller, I don’t think about them as being different.
Republicans are going to say cities are a disaster regardless of fact. Democrats are going to say they are safe regardless of fact. If you’re not firmly in one of those camps, I think the Trump actions look ridiculous and dangerous. And I think from a politics perspective, anti-trump people are probably correct to focus on crime statistics dropping and this is all a farce, even if those numbers are still higher than New York and the numbers might be crooked. I think a strategy of admitting the problem while condemning Trump’s solution is weaker politically. The one thing I would say that democratic partisans are doing wrong is openly gloating on social media about Big Balls being assaulted and cheering on people who yell in agent’s faces before chucking a sandwich at them. Those are the types of things that support Trump’s narrative.
I live in DC’s third ward with my family. Josh makes some fair points. A big issue he overlooks is the ridiculous council members we elect. Trayon White was expelled by the council for taking a bribe, which was caught on camera. He was reelected to the council by his ward’s voters.
We exist in a middle ground where we have home rule but can have the feds over rule us when we get too wild. This also happened in the Biden administration with a bill about reforming the penalties for crimes. It reminds me of student council elections where they promise to serve pizza every day or something.
I wish we had self government like the rest of the country, but I’m sometimes relieved we don’t.
Oh yeah, the "Rothschild's control the weather" guy. Almost forgot about him.
Urban liberals (of which I am one) do have a longstanding tendency to pooh-pooh legitimate concerns about crime and disorder in cities. I’m not sure what it is. Part of it is probably that young white liberals who move to big cities view themselves as edgy/cool for being able to “handle” the grittiness of urban life unlike their conservative counterparts from their hometown. Part of it is that right-wing complaints about urban crime are evergreen and will occur regardless of the year or actual level of crime in the city or neighborhood in question, which probably makes liberals discount their concerns— for instance I was told by relatives in 2015 that they were too scared to visit crime-ridden manhattan, which at the time was experiencing some of the lowest levels of violent crime in decades. Part of it is also probably that conservative complaints about crime are often tinged with coded racism or prejudice about poor people. But whatever it is, it does result in a lot of city residents tolerating levels of disorder and lack of safety that, objectively, should not be acceptable.
It really depends on which liberals you're talking about. There are liberals/progressives heavily invested in neighborhoods and policies, and liberals who aren't. Some are effective at things like crime reduction, some aren't. What may seem to you like an unacceptable level of toleration may be "hey, it's way better than it used to be and I'm proud of the progress we've made" to someone else, though maybe not in DC based on what Josh and others are saying. It really does seem like DC has been left behind.
Also, keep in mind that rural areas can be absurdly violent, and we should all probably be a little less tolerant of letting commentators elide that fact when trashing godless liberals in general.
Maybe, but there's also just the fact that some level of crime will always exist plus there's a cost/benefit equation associated with efforts to reduce crime below whatever level it currently sits at. Crime by any statistical objective is pretty low in most places. That's just a fact. How people feel about the crime level is a different issue. It can always be lower but then the question about whether the deploy resources towards that goal or towards other goals becomes germane. It just staggers me that, of all problems we face, crime tops the lost for so many people given the stats
The truth is (and progressives don't like to mention this fact) is that we have as much crime as we'll tolerate. We know that imprisoning people convicted of committing crimes on multiple occasions reduces crime, but we choose to fool ourselves into believing that most of them can be rehabilitated, which is false. Most crime is committed by a hardcore small minority and we could reduce it substantially by imprisoning those people for life. It's our choice as a society not to do this, so we have essentially decided we're OK with allowing Americans to be victimized by criminals at a certain level.
Agreed, and I'll take it one step further. We are Ok with allowing less well off Americans to be victimized by criminals.
100%
Anecdotally, DC is the only city where I have gotten mugged. That was my first visit to the US and I wasn't yet familiar with the concept of good vs bad neighborhoods in a first world country. I was very scared and shaken up and even told a cop about it because I was afraid that if I get accosted by another set of muggers before I reach the metro station, I didn't have any cash to avoid a beating. The cop looked at me like I was wasting his time. Fortunately, nothing else happened and my friend had enough change for us to buy tickets back to the MD suburb where we were staying.
People usually cite homicide stats for political arguments but many crimes like mugging and property crimes go unreported and add to the feeling of a lack of safety. So, I totally agree with Josh that Democrats should take the issue of crime seriously, even if the incarceration rate goes up. They run most of the cities, not Republican mayors.
When I lived on the border between Adams Morgan and Mt Pleasant in the late 80's, there were about 450 murders a year in DC. For fun I looked up the rate in my first year in NYC (1991) - 2,571. So I suspect many of your readers are scratching their heads because for a lot of us, crime was an issue 3 decades ago that, statistically, has been reduced so substantially as to barely matter. So when the President goes on about crime it's almost 100% fear-mongering.
There seems to be some kind of Fox News Fallacy going on, and Trump is an expert at exploiting it. Find something obvious and true [1] and watch the Democrats refuse to admit it.
[1] he also says a lot of things that aren't true
This article is a perfect example of why I’m a paying subscriber to Josh’s work. He is not a part of a liberal echo chamber, but instead is an independent, practical, and thoughtful voice. Thanks for your work; it makes me feel more well-rounded as a consumer of political news and opinion.
Well done, Josh. I grew up in suburban Maryland, moved to Virginia after getting my undergraduate degree. Final Virginia home spot was in Alexandria where I lived for about 16 years, then moved north to get outside the DC Beltway culture.
Starting in 2007, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty did an excellent job of redeveloping the Southwest/Southeast portion of the city north of the Anacostia River. Included demolishing DC's version of Cabrini-Green high rise public housing, and installing a baseball park for the Washington Nationals (the Washington Senators had left in the 1970s). Restaurants, hotels, housing followed. It helped that the Navy finally realized its leased space in Arlington wasn't secure, and moved to the Navy Yard, near the Nationals stadium. DoD contractors followed, and office buildings were built. Result: Fenty served one term as mayor (2007-2011) but was voted out, when he lost the D primary. Previously he served 2 terms on the DC city council from Ward 4. [Now Fenty is doing VC work with Marc Andressen.]
FYI: Eleanor Holmes Norton was first elected as DC's delegate to Congress in 1990. She is still on the job at 88 years old.
Another scion of the Democrats' Congressional gerontocracy.
About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine who worked at the National Archives was retiring and was kind enough to give a behind the scenes guided tour for my daughter, niece (both early teens) and I before he left the job. The visit was fantastic but on the Metro ride back, a disheveled man who was either high or on some kind of mental health episode got into our car & was aggressively screaming at and confronting riders. He then stopped right next to where we were sitting and dropped his pants. Between his junk literally dangling next to their faces and the stench of his fecal stained pants, it was a traumatic experience for the girls. We got off at the next station and took the next train home. No this was not an assault or violent felony but it shouldn’t be accepted either. My point is that when elected Dems wave around the charts showing “declines” in recorded crimes, it only infuriates people who have lived through the constant anxiety induced by unchecked disorder in public spaces.
Is Trump’s possibly unlawful use of the military to patrol the streets of DC going to fix any of this? Absolutely not, but can you really blame some people for being so angry and Dems’ dismissal of their legitimate public safety concerns that they shrug off Trump’s authoritarian actions?
Thank you Josh, the experience and the perspective of your post was very informative.
I think the big issue here is distinguishing between levels and rates. I grew up in the DC area (80s/90s) and lived in the district for 15 years (‘07-‘22). There’s simply no question the district became safer over that period. Areas of the city that now feature $1M+ homes were just not safe places to go in the 80s/90s/early 2000s. A large geographic part of the city became much safer over that period. I remember being a kid and going to concerts in the late 90s at the then-new location of the 9:30 club near Howard and the Capitol Ballroom near what is now Nats Park and being scared—about my car, about the walk to the metro. Safety in those areas has improved dramatically.
At the same time, “safer” is not the same thing as “safe.” I now live in Denver and spend approximately zero mental energy worrying about safety. In DC, I’d worry about package theft all the time and would often take taxis (then Ubers) short distances because I was worried about walking late at night (I was mugged once, in ‘08, by three dudes who couldn’t have been older than 14). That kind of stuff just never enters my mind in Denver.
There’s a lot of crime in DC. It’s better than it was but it can improve still. The local politicians mostly suck ass, so there’s a clear role for the feds. The problem, of course, is that *these* feds suck even more ass.
Buzz on Fridays?
Thirty some years ago I lived at 19th and Kalorama. Loved the neighborhood but never knew where I might find my car. No kids yet so it didn't bother me as much as it would today (in crime free downtown Boston). My question is why the Biden Administration did nothing in 2022-2023 and left this low hanging fruit.
As someone who has appreciated a lot of your work and regularly enjoyed your podcast for quite a while, I'm genuinely surprised that I'm apparently the only one thoroughly disgusted by this piece. It is absolute hot garbage.
It is completely unreasonable to legitimize the claims of a crisis based on your anecdotal information, skepticism of recent data, and the comparatively high rates of crime over the long term. No rational person could look at the troves of readily accessible data going back to the 60s and determine that that is a rational take on the situation. This is obviously about normalizing the process of federalizing police to terrorize, intimidate and punish blue cities for political ends. This is intended to be made permanent. This is intended to be repeated elsewhere. They are very transparent about these goals. You're suggesting we should assume Trump is acting in good faith and engage in some productive bipartisan policy discussions. Seriously?
You're very upset about Hakeem Jeffries' statement and its potential impact on voters. No similar concerns that Trump has announced that he hates over half the country and is actively moving to occupy and punish them. Mind numbing.
Your take on crime is ridiculously unnuanced. I get that you're an anti-woke Democrat. You support more cops, more prosecutors, more judges, more aggressive tactics from all, more prison cells filled and longer sentences. Common sense so clean and unassailable that it's incredibly frustrating that someone would argue otherwise, right? Well, that's bullshit. If you looked into it with an open mind, you'd know it's much more complicated than that. It makes for terrible, destructive policy, but it's always good politics. You bemoan the difficulties in recertifying a crime lab that is needed to gain more convictions, but conveniently ignore that it lost certification because it was a corrupt outfit railroading innocent people. Or maybe that's how you'd prefer they operate.
You identify with the young professionals fearing violent crime, but are incapable of empathizing with or even humanizing those who are intended to be the targets of intimidation, with national guardsmen apparently liberated to do "whatever the hell they want". You've shown the same dehumanizing attitude in some of your other pieces towards asylum seekers. You're a talented writer. Extremely sharp and perceptive, and sometimes hilarious. But you're also an elitist in the absolute worst sense of the term.
So what is the appropriate response to reduce crime in DC and other blue cities? What are they not doing that they should be doing?
If not declaring emergencies everywhere and sending in troops, then what? Hm, good point. It is after all such a reasonable option with so many upsides. Definitely well within the normal ebb and flow of policy decisions in a pluralistic democracy.
Even framing the question as blue city problem is capitulating to the concept of Republican superiority on crime that Democrats must mimic if they want to win. It's a poisonous idea. I've lived in San Diego for 21 years, 14 with a Republican mayor and 7 with a Democrat. I can't tell you a single thing I can point to that was different while living in a red city versus a blue city. You can never win on improving crime, because people still don't feel safe. Most of us have lived through a remarkable period of dropping crime and yet the overwhelming majority were convinced crime was rising through the whole time. It's the mindset that allows Trump to win in 2016 on a platform of chaos in the cities and an invasion at the southern border despite multi decade lows in crime and in illegal border crossings.
The crime delusion, based in feelings not facts, is impossible to address with logic. Feeling unsafe is, of course, amplified by our media landscape at every turn, where local TV news emphasizes crimes, social media sensationalizes violent acts all of which are captured by ubiquitous cameras, and what were once stories one might have read in a single local newspaper all become national stories daily that everyone sees in their doomscrolls
"Well, that's bullshit. If you looked into it with an open mind, you'd know it's much more complicated than that."
No, actually, it's not. It's not at all complicated. We have as much crime as we will tolerate as a society. Imprisoning more people reduces crimes. We just feel guilty about doing that on the scale necessary to reduce criminal behavior. It's not any more complex than that.
I can tell you really believe that. Ok.
Not only do I believe that - the evidence clearly shows the impact of increased sentences for career criminals on crime trends.
"Everything is so complicated" as an excuse for doing nothing has long since worn thin. It is possible to do things, to change things for the better.
I don't claim to be an expert, but over time I have made a genuine effort with an agnostic attitude to understand the body of knowledge related to the effectiveness of criminal justice policies. If you do a little googling of 'efficacy of tough on crime policies' or 'societal impacts of tough on crime policies', then filter through the quality of what you find to try to eliminate clearly partisan works trying to justify their preferred policies, a picture may start to emerge. For me, that picture was not that the evidence is clear. To me, a rational person could not go through that process and end up where you are.
Thanks for your thoughts. They are informative.
As are yours, appreciate you providing further background on where you are on these things.
I’m not sure that good governance and good politics necessarily align here. I don’t have any reason to doubt you that DC is less safe than NYC. But as someone who lives thousands of miles away, and a non-city dweller, I don’t think about them as being different.
Republicans are going to say cities are a disaster regardless of fact. Democrats are going to say they are safe regardless of fact. If you’re not firmly in one of those camps, I think the Trump actions look ridiculous and dangerous. And I think from a politics perspective, anti-trump people are probably correct to focus on crime statistics dropping and this is all a farce, even if those numbers are still higher than New York and the numbers might be crooked. I think a strategy of admitting the problem while condemning Trump’s solution is weaker politically. The one thing I would say that democratic partisans are doing wrong is openly gloating on social media about Big Balls being assaulted and cheering on people who yell in agent’s faces before chucking a sandwich at them. Those are the types of things that support Trump’s narrative.